


Surveiller et punir

by Kainosite



Category: Les Misérables (TV 2018), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: (sort of), Bondage, Caning, Corporal Punishment, D/s, Fix-It, Javert Has Two (2) Subs, M/M, Martingale, Post-Seine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 00:04:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20200411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kainosite/pseuds/Kainosite
Summary: Javert and Valjean have come to an arrangement that's kept both of them alive and out of the prison hulks.Now if only Rivette's heart can hold up.





	Surveiller et punir

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Esteliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/gifts).

“Use rope.”

There’s a wicked satisfaction in Javert’s smile. He holds up the skein of rope triumphantly, as if it were a crucial piece of evidence or his newborn child.

Rivette glances between his chief and the convict standing in the doorway.

Jean Valjean has the guarded look he always wears at the beginning of these sessions, his eyes just visible beneath the brim of his cap, his head carried low, like a stray dog that isn’t sure whether to run or to bite. Rivette’s seen him dressed like a gentleman a few times, and he could almost see it then, how some little provincial town up north might take him for a pillar of the community and appoint him their mayor. You could mistake that wariness for bourgeois reserve, maybe. But today he’s wearing workingman’s clothes and it’s easy to see it for what it is: the half-hidden shame of a criminal. No one would doubt the man standing in the Chief Inspector’s apartment is a thief.

Mind you, Rivette might be a little wary too, if Javert ever looked at him with such naked hunger in his face. Ecstatic, naturally, but also uneasy: the intensity of the chief’s attention has always been overwhelming, even when it’s about something as trivial as an incident report. To know what he wanted from you was not an accurate description of a crime but rather your entire self… Well, if Javert ever asked it of him Rivette would surrender himself willingly, without the need for all this theater, but inside his head he’d probably be gibbering incoherently the entire time.

They always restrain Valjean. It’s not really necessary – it was the first few times, of course, when even the chief wasn’t sure how things would go, but by now if they want him to keep still they could just order him to place his hands on the wall or bend over the desk or grip the headboard of Javert’s narrow bed, and he would do it. Or he wouldn’t, if he was in one of his contrary moods, and Javert could cane him for his disobedience, and that would suit them just as well.

In truth Rivette thinks they do it more for Valjean’s peace of mind than their own. When he comes in there’s always that furtiveness about him, an edgy nervousness to his movements that fades away once he’s securely bound. Rivette is long past the point of worrying that he might hurt them, but perhaps Valjean still fears his own strength, perhaps he’d rather trust in these external restraints than his internal ones. Or there’s something about not having a choice that makes it easier for him to submit.

Before they’ve just used handcuffs, though, or once or twice, memorably, Valjean’s cravat. The rope is new.

“Do you know how to make a martingale?” Javert asks.

It’s Valjean they’re meant to be monitoring, but somehow these sessions always end up turning into a test for Rivette too. He used to be terribly self-conscious about failing – in front of Javert’s criminal nemesis, no less! What would Jean Valjean think of them? How could Javert ever forgive him for letting him down? But that’s the nice thing about sex; you can only take someone so seriously once you’ve seen them completely undone, on their knees, red-faced and begging to come. Rivette doesn’t worry much about humiliating himself now.

“Um, you might have to refresh my memory, sir.”

This earns him a familiar look of exasperation, but Javert explains patiently, “A noose round the neck, passing between the legs, and tied to the bound hands behind.”

Rivette tries to picture it.

“Won’t that, er, get in the way?”

“Not with a slight modification. Instead of running the two strands between his legs, make him kneel and tie them round his ankles before you use them to bind his hands.”

“Seems like it’d be a lot simpler just to loop it around my neck and then run it down my back to tie my hands together,” Valjean puts in.

If Rivette’s ignorance meets with mild exasperation, this suggestion from the convict is met with withering contempt.

“No, because then if you struggle, you’ll choke. I want you secured, not strangled.”

From the grim smile that twists the corners of Valjean’s mouth, choking was the point. But he concedes defeat with a half-shrug and a sardonic, “Whatever you say, Monsieur l'Inspecteur.”

The form’s right, but there’s no real deference behind it, not yet. It’s a mockery of submission. The real thing will come later.

It’s strange, the way Valjean makes them force him to yield every time. It’s the one thing Rivette’s never been able to fathom, because the respect is there, buried beneath the defiance. A lot of criminals are completely hardened, indifferent to their sins, beyond the reach of shame or remonstration, filled with nothing but hatred and contempt for goodness and society and the law, but not Valjean. Yielding to Javert, to discipline – there’s something in it that draws him, something that he needs. There must be, because he keeps coming back.

They have him under surveillance – the old-fashioned kind, even, with these regular check-ins – but to a man like Valjean, a man who escaped the prison hulks and then evaded capture for seven years, slipping away from the police would be the easiest thing in the world. Javert doesn’t like to admit it, but back in ’32 they only found him by chance. Valjean could run whenever he pleases. From that very first night when Javert brought him back to the Prefecture still reeking of sewage and announced he wouldn’t be sending the prisoner back to Toulon, Jean Valjean has been a free man, and he knows it.

Javert would never stop searching for him, but Javert’s jurisdiction only extends to Paris. Valjean could go off to the provinces and they’d never find him. Or if he really wanted to disappear, he could leave the country, head for Guernsey or England or the Americas and start a new life beyond the reach of any pursuit. If he was reluctant to leave his family he could take them all with him. They have money enough to book passage and set themselves up in style anywhere they please.

Yet here he is, in Javert’s barren apartment, stripping off his clothes.

Rivette understands that part. There’s some quality about Javert – his moral certainty, his force of will, his upright bearing, the dark fire in his eyes, or all right, maybe it’s his very handsome face – that gets under the skin. Some people find it repellent, but for others it’s alluring, almost addictive. It makes people want to do things for him, even something as trifling as taking his coat when he comes in to the office. No one ever offered to take the Prefect’s coat back when _he_ was Chief Inspector.

But it makes Rivette want to please Javert, not to antagonize him. Valjean’s the only one he knows who seems to experience both the aversion and the attraction, forever drawn back to Javert but always butting heads with him, craving these sessions and hating himself and Javert for how much he needs them. By all accounts Valjean has a pretty good life: a snug apartment, money enough to keep himself well clothed and well fed, a doting daughter, a doting _son-in-law_, which in Rivette’s professional experience is a pretty rare commodity, a bouncing baby granddaughter and another on the way. He’s free in Paris when by rights he should be sweating in the prison hulks. But there’s still this smoldering anger running though him, a banked fury he can only release by coming here and letting Javert beat it out of him.

Rivette can see it even in the way he undresses, unbuttoning his waistcoat with sharp, jerky motions like it’s done something to anger him, tearing off his shirt and crumpling it into a ball which he throws into the corner. Javert won’t like that, the untidiness, but maybe that was the idea.

Javert’s watching him too, looking on as the convict’s clothes are stripped away to reveal his powerful torso, the familiar lattice of scars across his back. The last of the winter day is fading outside, but Javert has yet to light the candelabra or the lamp on his desk, so he’s standing in shadow, the orange glow of the setting sun reflected in his eyes. That and his beauty and the fierce anticipation in his face make him seem almost inhuman, like a god or a demon come down to visit divine punishment on Valjean. Rivette shivers a little as he goes to take the rope from him.

Valjean kneels without being asked – he never makes them force him physically, perhaps because he knows they can’t and it would give the game away – and he’s still beneath Rivette’s hands as Rivette fastens the rope around him, tense but controlled. It’s a strange feeling, tying the rope around his neck. Rivette’s touched Valjean in far more intimate places, but there’s something about the vulnerability of the throat, the control of breath, of life, that fills the gesture with a profound significance. Valjean meets his eyes as he ties the knot and Rivette knows he feels it too. He’s thinking of the chain gang, maybe, and how it felt to have the iron collar fastened around his neck – by a rivet, no less.

Rivette ties the rope around Valjean’s ankles and then brings the ends up over his hips to tie his hands behind him, locking him in place. He can kneel upright or bend forward until his head is resting on the ground, but it’s impossible for him to rise. When Rivette has tied off the last knot Valjean tests the bonds, corded muscles bulging briefly as he strains against the ropes, and then all the tension goes out of him, the way it always does once they have him bound.

“Is that all right? It’s not too tight?” Rivette has never done this before – this is the first time he’s tied anyone up at all, truth be told, and his inexperience troubles him. He’s never had to worry about cutting off circulation or damaging the nerves with handcuffs.

Valjean turns his face away. Rivette thinks sometimes that he’d prefer to dispense with words in these sessions altogether, experience his need and his pain in its most raw animal form, just bodies finding release in each other. But they’re not here to gratify Valjean’s lust or even their own. They’re here to punish him on behalf of society, and that requires speech.

“Answer him,” Javert says.

“It’s fine.”

Javert frowns at the convict’s brusque tone in a way that would have Rivette quaking in his boots, though Valjean is facing the window and he can’t see it. But the chief lets it go for now, turns away to light the candles.

“So. Anything to report?”

“I was pretty short wth Monsieur Gillenormand.” Valjean laughs softly. “Perhaps you shouldn’t even count that one; some of the things he says– But, well. He’s a very old man and I was a guest at his table. There’s no excuse.”

“No,” Javert agrees. He’s never been much even for Rivette’s excuses; he’s not likely to accept one from a criminal. “What do you think, Rivette? Ten, for bad manners?”

“Seems about right, sir. To start off.”

In truth it doesn’t really matter what Valjean’s offense is, or how many strokes Javert assigns to it. The canings are for everything and nothing: the coin stolen from a little Savoyard twenty years ago, the tone he took with Rivette just now, the crumpled shirt in the corner. There is no fixed number of strokes, and the beatings go on for as long as Valjean needs them to, until he’s tearful and pliant and he feels like he’s paid for all his sins, at least until next time.

Javert takes up his cane from his desk and comes over to them.

“Yes, I like him like this, all laid out for me,” he says thoughtfully to Rivette, tracing the curve of Valjean’s buttocks with the shaft of his cane.

“And you, you like it too, don’t you?” he asks Valjean. He trails the cane over Valjean’s thigh and uses the tip to delicately lift his rapidly filling cock.

Valjean scowls at the floorboards and says nothing.

“’No comment’, hm? No matter. We can see the evidence for ourselves. Still…” Javert lets Valjean’s cock slip off the cane and gives it a light, warning tap. “If you want me to do anything about this, you’re going to have to ask for it.”

The convict continues to stare at the floor with a mulish expression, and guards his silence.

“No? I suppose I could just leave you there. Or I could have you shuffle into the dining room so I can look at you while I eat my dinner. You’d make a pretty centerpiece. What do you think, Rivette?”

“He might dribble on your tablecloth, sir,” Rivette says, nodding at Valjean’s cock, which is indeed showing a gleam of wetness at the tip.

“True. Well then. I’d better just beat you for your transgressions, hadn’t I? And afterwards, if you behave yourself, perhaps I’ll give you my cock. That’s what you really want, isn’t it?”

Valjean remains stubbornly silent. He’s never been chatty, but if his failure to answer Javert’s first query could be attributed to his laconic temperament, this repeated refusal is a clear provocation. He’s really asking for it today. Either he’s done something reprehensible that he’s not willing to tell them, or he’s sunk into one of his periodic bouts of melancholy and he’s convinced himself he deserves whatever Javert can throw at him.

What Javert decides to throw at him is a quick strike of the cane against his cock. Valjean howls and doubles over, but without his hands free to shield the delicate organ there is little he can do to protect himself.

“Isn’t it?” Javert repeats calmly.

“Yes, damn you!”

Punishment might be more Javert’s domain than Rivette’s, but there are some things that even he will not tolerate, and swearing at his chief is one of them. He tangles his fingers in graying curls and pulls Valjean’s head up, then slaps him crisply across the face.

“None of that. We’ll give you what you need, you know that, but you have to ask nicely.”

“What I need.” Valjean laughs. “You hypocrites. Look at your superior’s trousers, if you want to see who _needs_ this.”

Rivette draws his hand back to strike him again, but a gesture from Javert arrests the motion. At Javert’s nod he releases Valjean’s hair and steps back to let his chief take over. Javert rests the cane against the back of Valjean’s neck and presses down until he’s bowed over his knees, then flips it to stroke the chased silver head along his spine.

“You’re right to say that I want this,” he says, running the cane down to Valjean’s arse and stroking the head between the cleft of his buttocks. Valjean squirms, but pinioned as he is, there’s no way to escape.

“The difference between us is that I don’t take everything I want. I don’t give in to every one of my base urges. I exercise self-control, which is why I have risen to my current position while you…”

He doesn’t need to finish the sentence. Valjean’s current position speaks for itself. Javert presses the head of the cane against his hole, and Valjean rests his forehead against the floor and groans.

The silver knob is too big to fit inside him, not dry like this, not without Javert forcing it. But the mere threat has Rivette’s breath caught in his throat, and Valjean’s cock is swollen hard against his belly. Javert twists the cane in his hands so that the silver chasing on the head scours the sensitive flesh of Valjean’s rim, then presses it down against Valjean’s balls.

Rivette is caught between fascination and envy. Javert’s jabbed the head of that cane into his chest dozens of times. When he’s really annoyed he’ll sometimes press it under Rivette’s jaw, using it to tilt up his chin or pin him against a wall. But what would it be like to feel that pressure _there_, against his most tender parts, and know himself to be completely at his chief’s mercy?

“I should send you home just as you are,” Javert continues, thrusting the cane between Valjean’s thighs to rub it along the underside of his cock. “So that you can see what I _need_. So that you learn what it means for a man to have mastery over himself.”

He’d do it, too. He’d probably enjoy doing it, just to prove to them that he could, to demonstrate the full power of his will. Valjean had better submit, because if Javert interrupts this now and sends them both home Rivette may actually break down in tears. Javert might be carved from granite, but Rivette is only human, and seeing his chief like this, exulting in his power over the naked, trussed-up man at his feet – well, it’s not the sort of sight you can just walk away from. He can’t undermine Javert’s authority by raising his own objections, but he can silently pray for Valjean to see reason.

He prays, fervently.

“Please,” Valjean whispers to the floor.

“What was that?” Javert asks, although they both heard him perfectly well. “Speak up.”

“Please,” Valjean says aloud. “Punish me for my insolence, but please don’t send me away. I need you to punish me.”

“Since you ask so nicely,” Javert says. He twirls the cane in his hand, then taps Valjean’s arse with the shaft.

“Arse up.”

Valjean groans again but complies, bending further forward and straining at the ropes as he lifts his backside into the air. It’s not an ideal position for caning: he’s too low to the ground, and the loops around his ankles prevent him from raising his bottom very far off his heels. Rivette can only imagine what those five centimeters must be costing him. It would have been better to put him on his hands and knees – they could have tied his hands in front, maybe.

But perhaps the muscle strain is part of the punishment, and Javert is very good at this, skillful enough to hit even a small target. He’s not smiling now, but rather studying Valjean with the same solemn concentration he’d apply to a puzzling case file or a map of how smugglers are bringing contraband into Paris. He gauges his distance and then swings the cane, laying down the strokes one after another with mathematical precision.

Rivette can’t see the welts from his angle, but he knows they’ll be there, crimson weals marching in neat double lines down Valjean’s bottom. Javert always lands them perfectly parallel. The bruises from the last session have just about faded by now, but after tonight Valjean will have new ones, to remind him of the law’s mastery until their next meeting.

What Rivette can see is the little twitches in the muscles of Valjean’s face, the tensing of his jaw, the slight flinch after each blow. By the fifth stroke he is greeting each cut of the cane with a sharp gasp. By the eighth, his breath is coming in dry sobs. Javert reaches the promised tenth stroke, but the blows continue: Valjean isn’t broken yet, and they’d both be dissatisfied if he stopped now.

The two of them are lost in their own little world, leaving Rivette free to indulge in the familiar fantasy of imagining himself in Valjean’s place. It isn’t difficult. He has plenty of inspiration. He knows only too well how Javert, seething after some major cockup at the Prefecture, has itched to whirl him around, press him down against his desk and administer a dozen sharp strokes across his backside.

He’s never done it, of course. A police inspector cannot, in France in the year 1835, simply go around flogging his subordinates. It would be grounds for a duel, if they were of a class to indulge in such nonsense; as they are not, it is grounds for a punch in the face and some very bad blood in the office. That Rivette would willingly suffer this abuse and more is one of those truths that must go unspoken between them.

Javert expects his officers to have some self-respect, and he would not thank Rivette for shattering the illusion. In reality it’s an excess of regard for Javert rather than a lack of regard for himself that makes Rivette look on the thought of such debasement with equanimity, but it’s unprofessional of him even to consider it, much less to close his eyes and picture it the way he is doing now, or to lie in bed touching himself to the image, as he has on any number of occasions. However annoyed the chief might be with him, Javert would never commit such an outrage against the dignity of an honest citizen.

The dignity of a convict merits no such consideration.

The cane cracks across Valjean’s arse with the regularity of a metronome, until he’s crying out with every blow and there’s a distinctly wet note to his sobbing. Rivette opens his eyes to find that Valjean has closed his, and tears are trickling from beneath his eyelids. Javert says Valjean never cried when they flogged him in the prison hulks, but he weeps readily enough beneath Javert’s cane. Perhaps they just needed Javert to administer the flogging.

Eventually the beating stops. Javert is smiling again, pleased with his conquest.

“That’s more like it. Think he’s sorry?” he asks Rivette.

“I should think so, sir.” Rivette certainly would be, in Valjean’s place. Javert gives very thorough canings. But then, he doesn’t have Valjean’s predilection for pain. It’s true that Valjean never seems to learn his lesson, if indeed Javert is trying to teach him one, but he’s clearly had enough for one day.

“Go on, then. Get him ready,” Javert says.

Rivette goes into the dining room to wet his fingers with the lamp oil in the cabinet. He’s suggested once or twice that it might be convenient to keep a little bottle in the front room for just this purpose, but Javert won’t hear of it. The oil lamp is kept in the dining room, so that’s where the colza oil should be stored, end of story. The chief likes to keep this thing with Valjean contained, whatever it is. Rivette gets scolded if he brings it up at work, which is pretty funny considering that not too long ago you couldn’t get Javert to shut up about him.

Valjean is waiting patiently for him when he gets back – well, it’s not like he can go anywhere, can he? – and yields pliantly when Rivette maneuvers him into position. Rivette has to touch the fresh welts when he parts Valjean’s cheeks and offers a silent apology. Javert would rebuke him if he dared to voice any sympathy aloud, but from the way Valjean’s breath hisses between his teeth and he goes rigid beneath Rivette’s hand, it has to hurt. He gently strokes the unmarked skin of Valjean’s thighs until the tension in his muscles eases, then inserts his slick forefinger into Valjean’s hole. Valjean clamps down for a moment, but he soon relaxes and allows Rivette to add a second finger and then a third.

Rivette presses briefly against the spot that makes Valjean moan and push back against his probing fingers, but pleasuring Valjean is not his mission here; his duty is to prepare him for Javert’s cock. He stretches him a little further and then withdraws to await further instructions.

“I think Rivette’s done a good job, don’t you?” Javert asks Valjean.

Valjean nods in tearful agreement. Not that it means much. He’ll agree to just about anything in this state – not the full spectrum of Javert’s views on the penal code, perhaps, but anything they might ask him to do. Still, the chief’s good opinion is harder to come by, and Rivette feels a warm glow of pride at the praise. Also a certain relief. It’s not every session that he earns this perk.

“He deserves a reward,” Javert continues with a soft smile that’s just for Rivette, putting a hand on the back of Valjean’s head and giving him a gentle push towards the window. Valjean sniffles and nods again. He shuffles forward on his knees until he’s kneeling in front of Rivette.

Rivette unbuttons the fall of his trousers and pulls out his cock. He hasn’t touched it until now – no point in getting its hopes up when he wasn’t sure anything would come of it – but he’s been hard in his trousers ever since Javert took up the cane. Valjean obediently opens his mouth, and Rivette takes him by the hair again and thrusts himself inside.

He sets an easy pace. Valjean has to pull against the ropes in order to kneel up far enough to really take him in, and resting his weight on his heels must be painful after the beating he’s just had. Rivette’s not going to make things harder for him. Besides, the convict’s mouth is gloriously wet and hot and he’s already close to coming. It’s the first and last time anyone will be paying attention to him all evening; he wants to make it last at least a little while.

Still, there’s no reason why Valjean shouldn’t enjoy himself too. Rivette remembers his thwarted aspiration to choke himself on the martingale and pulls him in closer, forcing him to take his cock down to the root. The pressure of his throat on he head of Rivette’s cock is delicious, and Valjean gags and sputters and sucks all the more vigorously when Rivette draws back to let him breathe, so he concludes his little plan has met with approval. He figures Valjean is pretending he’s Javert every time he does it, but all’s fair in love and policing. It seems like a just exchange for all the time Rivette spends imagining Valjean is him.

Rivette comes when he’s halfway down Valjean’s throat, and the convict works diligently, swallowing down every last drop of his seed. He nurses Rivette through the aftershocks and then pulls off with a slight smile, the first real smile Rivette’s seen from him since he came in.

Valjean’s very good at this. He wasn’t at first – claimed he was virgin, even, though Rivette’s not sure he can believe it of a man who was twice in the prison hulks – but they’ve trained him well between them. Rivette’s a good teacher. Javert isn’t, exactly, but his students never forget a lesson.

It’s Javert’s turn now. He stripped down to his shirtsleeves and unbuttoned his trousers while Valjean was sucking off Rivette, and now he stands watching them, his head tilted back, one hand on his hip and the other slowing stroking his cock. He’s so beautiful in the candlelight that it takes Rivette’s breath away. He has the grace and grandeur of a king, standing there in his shirtsleeves on the bare floorboards in his austere little apartment.

If Rivette envies Valjean the canings, it’s nothing compared to how he envies him this. Even in the hazy afterglow of orgasm he feels a sharp pang of jealousy as he sees Javert line himself up behind the hole that he so carefully prepared for him and plunge deep inside. Valjean gives a soft cry; perhaps he tightened up a little while he was attending to Rivette, or perhaps it’s the force with which Javert slams into his welts. In any case, Javert takes no notice. He digs his fingers into Valjean’s hips and uses him, ruthlessly chasing his own pleasure and dragging little whimpers from the convict with every thrust.

It looks like it hurts. From the expression of anguished rapture on Valjean’s face, that’s the appeal. Rivette doesn’t share his craving for pain, but all the same, he’d give his right arm to trade places with him.

He never will, of course. He can never even ask. This is another degradation Javert would not visit upon an honest citizen. The chief is a good detective, and Rivette is sure he must know of Rivette’s feelings by now: try as he might, Rivette could never keep a longing this raw and desperate from his face. But as long as he holds his tongue, they can pretend. He is a loyal subordinate, nothing more, and if Javert sometimes despises him it is merely because like every other police officer in Paris Rivette falls short of the Chief Inspector’s exacting standards, not because he is nursing a secret perversion.

He isn’t like Valjean, with his incredible strength, his cunning and resourcefulness, his endless capacity to absorb punishment. If he’d been sent to the prison hulks he would probably have died there; if by some miracle he made it back to Paris, Javert would look at him with the same contemptuous loathing he feels for every other criminal. Valjean has earned Javert’s respect in spite of what he is. Rivette has earned Javert’s respect – to the extent that he has it – because of it. Javert likes him because he’s a diligent officer of upright character. If he should once falter and stumble off the path of righteousness, there will be no way back into Javert’s affections. 

He can never speak of his feelings. All he can do is watch his beloved chief fuck a convict and imagine himself in Valjean’s place.

Valjean is writhing in Javert’s grip. His cock, which had softened a little during the caning, is now painfully hard once more and flushed a desperate shade of red, but it’s impossible for him to get any friction. The most he can do is brush it lightly against the floor when Javert shoves him forward with a particularly hard thrust, and it’s not nearly enough. He tugs futilely at the ropes, desperate to touch himself, but with his hands bound behind him all he can do is take whatever Javert chooses to give.

At last Javert comes with a snarl of satisfaction. He pulls out of Valjean, leaving the convict bent over his thighs, fucked into limp exhaustion but still desperately aching to come. In all this time, no one has touched his cock, not since Javert struck it with the cane. Now he leans forward and takes it one hand, wrapping the other around Valjean’s hips to hold him still.

“Well, Jean Valjean. Do you think that you deserve to come?” 

“No,” Valjean sobs wretchedly, “no,” but his hips are bucking up against Javert’s restraining hand regardless, frantically thrusting against his palm.

“I say you do,” Javert says, and closes his fingers around Valjean’s cock. Valjean’s release spatters in white ropes all over his hand.

Rivette rouses himself and goes into the bedroom to wet a flannel in Javert’s basin. He returns with it and hands it to Javert, who meticulously wipes himself clean, first his hand, then his cock. Rivette kneels down and starts to untie the martingale.

“I’ll go fetch us some dinner,” Javert says, standing up and handing the cloth back to Rivette. Ever since he noticed Valjean starving himself that first summer, he’s insisted on watching him eat before he sends him on his way. He doesn’t have enough chairs to seat them all at the table, but considering the usual state of Valjean’s arse after one of these sessions, that’s all for the best. Sitting would no doubt put him off his appetite.

While Rivette is struggling with the knots, which were pulled tight by Valjean’s struggles, Javert slips his tailcoat back on and takes up his greatcoat and hat. Always economical, he snuffs out the desk lamp and all but one of the candles in the candelabra before he goes.

Rivette finishes untying Valjean and cleans him up, running the cloth over his softening cock, then carefully wiping away Javert’s spend where it’s dripping down his thighs. Valjean endures all of this in dazed silence, leaning on his elbow to keep his weight off the cane welts but otherwise letting Rivette position him as he will. Rivette’s pretty practiced at this by now, and he works efficiently.

But when Rivette reaches for his wrist to examine the marks left behind by the rope, Valjean jerks his hand away, clutching the wound protectively. In his post-coital daze he perhaps has not realized that this simply exposes the weal on his other wrist. Even in the half-light Rivette can see that the skin has been chafed an angry red.

“I’m sorry,” he says, a little hopelessly, because Javert and Valjean so obviously enjoyed themselves that he knows they’re quite likely to tie Valjean up like this again, and he does not think the problem is that he tied the rope too tight. It’s simply that hemp is a rough material and Valjean is bound to rub against it when he struggles.

“It’s nothing. In Toulon the manacles rubbed us raw.”

The comparison to the prison hulks is not much of a comfort. Valjean must see this, because after a moment he reaches out to grasp Rivette’s arm and gives it a gentle squeeze.


End file.
